Two friends asked me just last week what the orange RSS button means up there in the left hand corner.   If you read blogs or go to websites for information you see it almost everywhere.    I suspect they are not the only two readers who don’t know what it is.

RSS stands for rich site summary.  It is a system that will automatically forward each new blog post as it is posted.  You can choose to receive an e-mail containing the post, or to have the title added to an RSS reader provided by Google, Yahoo, AOL and other browser services.

This way, you don’t have to remember to go back and find a blog to see if there are new posts.  It can be quite handy and you can cancel it easily if you decide you don’t want it anymore for a particular blog - but, of course, you would never want to cancel this one!

Go ahead and click on the button.  You will see a new window with a lot of little buttons for the different browser services and also a place to select, send it by e-mail.  If you have a Google, Yahoo or AOL account, clicking there will add a Reader area to your home page and you will see the title of each post.

I prefer have the posts come to my Google reader.  Then when I am eating lunch or waiting for a phone call, I can just look at the list, click on a title that sounds interesting and read it.  From there, you can choose to keep it or toss it.  If you choose e-mail alerts, then you can read it in your in-box.

Don’t be afraid….. Click on that orange button now - I double dog dare you to do it!